The Muscle Debacle
by the zesty lemon
Summary: Lance has the best arm muscles on the entire ship! Or does he? A careless comment prompts the Blue Paladin to figure out which teammates have the best muscles and where. - One shot. Hints of Keith/Lance.


It started out innocently enough.

"I have the best arm muscles." Lance bragged loudly to Hunk, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching him bustle around the kitchen in his favorite frilly apron.

Hunk is only half paying attention, his tongue poking out from between his lips as he hums and haws over the precise measurements of his latest Altean food concoction.

"That's not entirely true." Pidge throws the comment carelessly from the bar stool at the kitchen counter, not even glancing up from her computer.

If she had taken a second, one measly second to look up from the screen of her laptop, Pidge would have noticed the telltale signs of Lance's brain running a thousand solar systems a minute.

"Oh yeah? Who has better arm muscles than me?" Lance challenged indignantly, flexing his upper body to prove his point.

"Well…" Pidge pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, rather annoyed that this was a topic of conversation at all. But when Lance got in one of these kinds of moods, it was better just to humor him quickly and then he'd leave her alone.

"Say you do have the best biceps, I suppose if we're taking about just the strength of a singular muscle group alone. But really you have to break that down into groups of muscles and conclude that you may have the best biceps, but _not_ the overall upper body muscles as a whole." Pidge explained.

Lance looked pleased that Pidge admitted he might have had the best biceps, but grows rapidly sulky when she doesn't give him the title of "best upper body muscles".

"How do you know?" He pouted unhappily.

"Well. Everyone has muscles. And with the team's different fighting styles and training regiments we're all bound to have certain muscle groups that are more developed than our other teammates." She explained.

"So what you're saying is I have the best biceps but someone else could have the best shoulder muscles." Lance finally clued in to what Pidge was saying.

"Something like that, yes."

"And what you're saying is that we should find out who has the best muscles of all the Paladins." Lance added, an idea forming.

"Sure I mean… Wait. No. That's not what I'm saying. Lance. Come back." But it's too late. By the time Pidge realizes what she's done, it's far too late to stop Hurricane Lance. The door of the kitchen _whooshed_ shut, the Blue Paladin making his escape.

"Do you think he'll just forget about this?" The youngest Paladin groaned hopefully, a terrible sense of dread growing in the pit of her stomach.

"Nope." Hunk didn't even glance up from his baking.

…

Two days later, Hurricane Lance hits again.

"Okay. Okay. Pidge, you were right." Lance announced grandly as he swept into the common area, where Pidge, Keith and Hunk were relaxing.

"Isn't she usually?" Hunk quipped lazily, blinking blearily at Lance. He'd been taking a nap on the couch while Pidge worked on her computer and Keith cleaned his sword.

"Yes. But this time, I'm the one with the findings to share with you." Lance nodded in agreement.

"Findings?" Pidge repeated, her brow furrowing in confusion.

"Yes. Keith, can you stand up for a moment?" Lance asked.

Keith exchanged a bewildered and wary look with Pidge, but in his confusion he placed his sword down anyways and stood. By now even Hunk is looking at Lance and Keith curiously, one eye cracked open.

"I may have the best biceps on the team," Lance explained in that same, self-assured, grand air, "but I have to concede that Keith here has the best back muscles."

 _Oh no._ Pidge thinks just before Lance yanks Keith's shirt right off his back. Keith lets out a startled yelp as suddenly he's exposed to the chilly air of the Altean ship.

"See?" Lance said proudly, pointing to his teammates back, where sure enough, Keith has an impressive set of toned muscles.

"Give me that!" Keith snapped angrily, snatching his shirt back from Lance, an impressively bright blush staining his cheeks. He quickly stuffed his shirt back on.

"What the heck are you doing?" The Red Paladin rounded on his teammate.

"Trying to find out who has the best muscles on each part of their body." Lance explained so honestly that Keith is momentarily shocked into silence.

"Best muscles?" He parroted. Lance nodded conspiratorially.

"It was Pidge's idea," Lance jabbed his thumb towards the sputtering Green Paladin, who looked ready to rip his head off, "she said everyone has different training regiments so that they probably have certain muscle groups that are more developed than our other teammates." He paused for a breath.

 _He's monologuing._ Pidge, Keith and Hunk thought simultaneously.

"I decided to implement Pidge's hypothesis, starting with you, the sword guy of the team. I'm the sharp shooter so of course I'd have different muscles from you."

Keith stared at him, jaw dropping.

"So wait. You ripped off Keith's shirt without actually knowing if you were right first? Or did you spot his back muscles earlier?" Hunk asked curiously.

There was a beat of silence as two of the four Paladins in the room became rather flustered and increasingly red.

"Never mind all that." Lance coughed, a blush erupting over his cheeks as he glanced over at Keith, who just seemed to grow redder. Luckily Hunk had mercy on them and let it slide.

"More developed muscles?" Keith stammered, desperate to get past any more prying questions and latched on to the only thing that seemed to make sense in that entire speech. He glanced down at his own biceps. They're impressive, sure, but even Keith has to admit that Lance seems to have the best biceps (as Lance is so helpfully flexing once more).

"Maybe this could help with training." Keith said suddenly, the previously murderous expression on his features has disappeared, replaced by excitement. The Red Paladin has always been extremely fond of training. And bettering his training. And training some more. Something about a guy fighting against a pre-programmed robot was very therapeutic for Keith.

Unknowingly, Lance has just recruited his first teammate in this extremely strange endeavor. If they fond out who had the best muscles and where, Keith could focus on getting stronger in those areas!

A cold sweat breaks out over Pidge's body.

"Yeah, yeah, sure. And we can find out who has the best overall muscles on the team. I still think it's me." Lance is clearly still just interested in his part of the plan.

Lance and Keith begin to talk and she slowly, very slowly, packs up her work and tip toes towards the door. This is one project that she absolutely refused to be a part of.

Luckily Lance and Keith seem too caught up in discussing their plan and she makes her escape, noticed only by Hunk.

…

Allura is the next target of the "who has the best muscles and where" project.

For three days the princess has had an audience in the training room. It's not uncommon for the other Paladins to sit in on someone else's training session. Watching other fighting styles has its benefits and most of the time it is to the team's advantage.

Admittedly she's a little unnerved however, when on the third day, Keith and Lance hunch over some kind of chart as they watch her train. They're talking in low voices and keep glancing over to her as she moves through her training simulation and quite frankly it's starting to get on her nerves.

Allura is so distracted by their strange behavior that at one point she's completely blindsided by one of the training guardians and takes a full hit to the stomach. Winded, the training simulation ended abruptly and the princess of Altea decides she has finally had enough.

"What on _earth_ are you doing here?" Allura demanded, glaring over at the two Paladins. This is certainly something that she expected from Lance, often he was a distracting and goofy character, but it was a little strange to see Keith working with him so closely. Something that united those two couldn't be good.

"Ah! Princess, just in time as usual. Step into our office, we've finally figured it out." Lance waved her over, completely ignoring her demand. The look of anger on the princess's features melts away and is instead replaced by curiousity.

"Figured what out?" Allura briefly thought she could hear Pidge shriek _"don't ask!_ " somewhere in the distance, but she really must be hearing things.

"Congratulations princess, you've won the best leg muscles award! You beat everyone else on the ship." Lance announced excitedly, offering the clipboard to her with a flourish. All that is on the clipboard is a diagram of a body outline with an arrow pointing to the legs and a single checkmark and doodled smiley face.

There was a long, long, moment of silence as the Princess of Altea stared at the two Paladins uncomprehendingly.

" _What_."

Keith quickly launched into a brief explanation of what they were doing, sensing a growing murderous intent radiating from Allura. The princess could be downright scary when she was angry and he much rather liked his balls where they were.

"So you've concluded I have the best leg muscles on the team? Allura asked curiously, glancing down at her legs as though she'd never seen them before.

"Hands down, princess." Lance agreed. Keith nodded.

It was true. Allura's legs were extremely toned. Her fluid method of fighting really kept her on her toes, leaving her very defined calf muscles and quads. She'd never thought anything of it before, but it was strangely flattering to win a ship-wide award!

"Will you join us, princess? Help us find out the other best muscle awards?" Lance extended his hand to Allura hopefully, his blue eyes shining with a debonair smile gracing his lips.

Allura pondered only for a moment, before accepting the Blue Paladin's hand.

"It is an honor to serve in such a mission." The princess said formally. Keith and Lance exchanged triumphant smiles. The two Paladins began to talk about their plan and the princess found herself momentarily lost in thought.

 _Well, it beats playing charades one more time._ Allura shrugged. As much as she dearly loved the mice, if she had to guess "movie" or "cheese" one more time she was going to die of boredom.

Sometimes space could be a little tedious.

…

Just like that, a scourge rips through the Castle of Lions.

Lance, Keith and even the esteemed Princess Allura have joined forces to figure out who had the best muscles (or group of muscles) on the team.

Coran joined after barely a few words of explanation much to their delight and Pidge's growing horror.

The Altean advisor cried tears of happiness when Lance informed him that he'd won the "best moustache muscles" category, which was an incredibly disturbing thought that apparently Altean moustaches could, in fact, have muscles.

Hunk won "best butt muscles", as discovered by Keith who'd accidentally walked in on a butt naked Yellow Paladin. What a way to discover that your friend had possibly the most perfect glutes ever, but damn did Hunk dominate that category. No one else's glutes (except maybe Allura's) could even compare.

Pidge remained to be the only holdout, but she knew it couldn't last long. Without Shiro to put a stop to all this nonsense (he'd left for a low stakes, solo mission a week ago), she knew it was only a matter of time.

The youngest Paladin wasn't sure how many times she'd walked in to a room lately only to have conversation scream to a halt and her teammates' eyes digging in to her, assessing her slight form with their stupid clipboards.

Even Hunk, who'd so far been pretty hands-off in this whole debacle, joined in. His attitude seemed to be along the lines of: _if you can't beat 'em, join 'em._

A few more days passed and the Green Paladin was constantly on edge. She began hiding from her teammates and fleeing the room immediately after training was done. She avoided the customary hang out areas like the plague and instead barricaded herself in her room.

Pidge should have known that they'd stoop to underhanded methods to get her.

"Good work this morning Paladins, that was some good hustle out there." Allura commended happily. They were all covered in sweat and out of breath from the morning's training activities.

"I just have some calculations to run…" Pidge smiled as convincingly as possible, backing towards the door. She started slightly as she bumped into something. The Green Paladin turned around in confusion, craning her neck to look up to meet Hunk's sharp gaze.

"Oops, sorry Hunk. I'll just slip right—"

"NOW!" Allura barked.

There was a sudden commotion and Pidge grunted as she was tackled to the ground by Lance, Keith and Allura . The smallest Paladin struggled hard—thanks to the sweat from her workout she slipped through their arms like a fish and hit the ground running. She would have made it too—had she not forgotten about Allura's ace in the hole: the castle mice.

The tiny mice held up a tripwire—catching Pidge's foot and she crashed to the ground, sliding to a stop with a defeated groan.

Hunk hauled her up a moment later, making sure that she was okay but also holding her arms steady so she couldn't make a run for it again.

"Pidge, Pidge, Pidge. My little pigeon." Pidge glared at Lance irritably at the terrible nickname, but he continued, unaffected. "You chose the hard way, so this one's on you." He clucked his tongue in a scolding manner.

"You guys are jerks." Pidge glared at her teammates.

"Jerks we may be, but we finally figured it out. You officially win for best abs Pidge."

Pidge squawked indignantly as Lance lifted up a portion of her shirt, pointing to the glistening abs that lay underneath. They were the picture of what you always hoped and dreamed abs would look like. They were so perfect; it nearly brought tears to her teammates eyes.

"They're so… shiny." Keith, Allura and Hunk said in simultaneous awe. Even the castle mice appeared entranced.

"How did you get those?" Keith asked, practically drooling over the defined muscle. Pidge finally yanked an arm free and pulled her shirt back down with a fierce glare at Lance.

"It's because I climb all the equipment." She sighed a long-suffering sigh. Perhaps she should have just humored them and gotten this over with days ago. Dammit they were persistent. Upon noticing their blank looks, she decided to elaborate. The sooner she got this out of the way, the sooner she could get to planning their soon to be unsolved murders.

"I'm constantly climbing through the castle vents and on the lions to get at the tech. A lot of the time I have to hold strange positions for hours on end. It's hard work." Pidge said crossly.

(For months after this, she'll constantly have to yell at Keith to _stop trying to fit in the air vents you moron, or no! get out of that panel for the love of—go do some sit-ups if you want abs)._

"Now is this craziness finally over?" Pidge glared at her teammates, who in turn peered at each other.

"Not quite." Lance quipped smugly, twisting the ends of an invisible moustache in devious thought.

…

Two days later, when Shiro does finally arrive home to the Castle of Lions, he's extremely confused and _alarmed_ to receive a small, homemade looking trophy from Lance that reads: _Best Overall Physique._

"The whole team agreed unanimously on the vote." Lance assured him proudly, wiping a happy tear away while simultaneously looking jealous.

He only grows more alarmed when he notices that Allura, Hunk, Lance, Keith and even a very exasperated Pidge all have some kind of honorary badge. He definitely does not want to know why Hunk's says: _Best Booty._ Nor why Coran has one pinned to his moustache.

"What on earth happened while I was gone?" Shiro asks no one in particular, eyeing his strangely flattering, yet very disturbing trophy. He vaguely hears Pidge shriek " _don't ask_!" but the sound is quickly muffled so he must have been hearing things.

It was good to be home.

* * *

A/N: I have recently descended into the Voltron Fandom and it is lovely here! (Can't wait for season 6!)

This popped into my head and here it is. :D


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